The 17-year-old girl is telling me about her life after being raped in a village in Haryana. The real problem, she says, is there is nowhere to go. A trip to the tailor sets off tongues. If she smiles so much in public, eyebrows shoot up. And there are times when even her father, frustrated with legal proceedings, yells at her for bringing so much trouble.
The family eventually moved out of the village and I lost touch with the girl. But I doubt the situation has changed very much. Violent sexual assault continues and so do social attitudes towards girls and women who are raped.
Rape is perhaps the only crime deemed so horrible that it robs victims of the right to joy; where mediators, including judges, counsel girls to marry their rapists because, of course, nobody else will—unless they end up dead in which case we rush to bestow martyrdom as if a Nirbhaya or, now Abhaya, had willing leapt into the flames of patriarchy instead of just being regular women who wanted to work and aspire.
This is why I find the story out of Avignon, southern France so gripping. By turning down her legal right to anonymity, Gisele Pelicot, a 72-year-old woman is changing the narrative on how we talk about rape.
Over a decade from 2011 to 2020, Dominique Pelicot, Gisele’s now ex-husband, had been drugging her until she was practically comatose, then inviting men he had recruited online to come to his house and rape her while he filmed them. Of the 72 men in the videos, the police have identified 51 who along with the husband are now on trial.
By refusing to be anonymous, Gisele has taken control of the narrative of her life and is reminding the world that the shame of rape does not fall on her but on the men who raped her.
She is also showing the world what rape victims go through when they seek justice. Last week a defense lawyer for one of the accused rapists implied that she might have been an accomplice with “tendencies you are not comfortable with.” In a country where 94% of rape complaints are closed without any action taken, according to Le Monde, women “spill everything out into the open only to be humiliated,” she told the court.
She has emerged as an unlikely feminist hero with crowds applauding her as she leaves the court. But, most crucially, Gisele Pelicot has turned the spotlight on men who rape. “The sight of the courtroom filled with regular men on trial is a stark reminder that it is regular people who rape,” says Sohaila Abdulali, author of What we Talk About When we Talk About Rape.
Indeed, the fire officer, prison warden, nurse, journalist, neighbor and even the one who raped her on the day his daughter was born are your average guys. Some have claimed they did not realize what they were doing was rape (seriously? What did they think it was?). One has said he had the husband’s consent and presumed it was enough. Another said he thought it was a “sex game”. Only three men are reported to have refused to go through with the husband’s suggestion. Not one reported it to the police.
Not all men, sure. But always a man.
Data tells us that over 90% of rapists are known to their victims. In India, National Crime Records Bureau rape stats tell us 96.8% of men accused of rape in 2021 were neighbours, relatives, friends, co-workers. Yet, we continue to peddle the notion that rapists are monsters who lurk in dark alleys.
We don’t talk about the uncle who rapes because, well, family honour. We don’t talk about husbands who rape because, well, that’s not even legally rape.
If one in three women globally is subjected to domestic violence, then don’t we need to ask who are these one in three men who commit it?
We know that sexual assault is an endemic problem. Gisele Pelicot is telling us not just how engrained it, but is asking how it is that rapists and predators exist amongst us, thriving in our neighbourhoods.
She is reminding us that the sexual abuse of women is a terrible reality. But also that a fight back is possible. That we must break the silence, and that she has in fact broken it.
Namita Bhandare writes on gender.The views expressed are personal
